As the tide comes in
by CapturetheFinnick
Summary: Phil washes up on a desert island, with no memory of how he got there, seemingly all alone. Until a boy comes and helps him back to health. Phan. Angst/fluff. Chapter fic. Rated K for some violence (later on)
1. Chapter 1

_**Oops this is another chapter fic oops I promise I'm not abandoning my other ones promise**_

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Sand. Sand is pressing against my eyelids, digging into my legs, pushing its way into my mouth, sliding between my toes. Am I drowning? Have I been trapped inside a sand timer like Jasmine? And if so, when will my Aladdin come? I scoff, I have no Aladdin. Or at least I attempt to, all I do is draw more sand into my mouth, the coarse grain grating along my tongue. It tries to run down my throat. I cough, spluttering and only ending up with more sand in my mouth. Is this what drowning feels like? With the movement comes pain, my head feels as if a spear has rammed through my brain, entering through my temple and getting lost somewhere within my vital organ. I can't groan because my mouth is too dry so instead I just lie there, eyes squeezed shut in agony, like a clam waiting to be picked off by a seagull. I want that now, I want a bird to swoop down and take me, to let me fly before devouring me. Pain shoots through my leg. What is going on? Am I being roasted alive? Am I being experimented on? Am I being slowly chopped to pieces before being fed to a plant? Melodramatics come easy to me.

The pain is so searing that I don't think for a while, just lie there, waiting for my bird, my prince. But they don't come. Because this is real life. Or I assume that it is. I realise I am very warm. I didn't notice that before but suddenly my back feels as if it is burning, an oppressive heat radiating from above. The sand is hot too, and suddenly it feels less like Velcro being scratched against my skin and more like I am being branded, the hot poker burning into my skin. It makes me move. I roll over, still unable to open my eyes, still feeling like I am in the dark. I roll onto something, something soft and pliable. It seems to accept my weight. This time I cry out, the sand in my throat burning like it is on fire. And I cry and cry, feeling the dryness of my tongue, the burning sand; no tears come.

I open my eyes but immediately have to shut them again. The sun sears into my eyes like a steak on a grill. Where am I? Surely only hell would be this hot. I turn myself back over again, using my arms to push myself up. But they are weak. My muscles scream, wobbling like jelly and I just can't do it and my voice is gone, snatched away by the heat. All I am is burning pain. I fall back to the sand, the redness of the back of my eyelids fading to black until I am gone, there are no more thoughts.

I am wrapped up. Something tight surrounds me from the neck down, trapping my arms and legs. I try to move but it is no good, my body shifting merely millimetres. My head falls backwards, it hits something hard, something shiny and cold. My hair is gone and I feel the freezing metal against my head. It makes me flinch though I cannot move. But the dryness has gone and the heat has gone. I tilt my head. There are other people here. They look still too. I shout, "Hello!" no one moves, not even a little, their bodies stagnant and drooping backwards, many of them on their sides. "HELLO?" I shout once more. But then I see it. These people are dead, their eyes empty, their lips parted in their last words. I want to scream but I don't know how. I am on a silver slab, filled with dead people. It can't get any worse. But then it does, a giant face appears. A woman, it would seem, with wisps of hair on her chin and a glint in her eye. Except that one of these 'wisps of hair' is the same size as my body. And now I see it, I am on a tray, wrapped in pastry, and the woman is going to cook me. I scream now, and scream for real, my lungs exploding with sound and fear. The tray is shaking. I am screaming. My insides are rattling. Real tears are pouring from my eyes and onto the pastry but she won't stop. The tray shakes once more. "Hey!" someone screams and the woman's face fades, to be met with a boy's. I don't stop screaming. "Ssh, Ssh." The boy says, but he looks alarmed, his body retreating from mine and his eyes flickering with uncertainty. He doesn't know what to do. "It's okay," he says, patting my arm rather heavily. It's more like a slap really. I stop screaming. And the boy calms, his face relaxing and his eyes growing softer. His brown eyes. To match his brown hair. I look him over, my eyes lingering over his every feature. I wouldn't normally. But this is far from normal. His brown hair flops down, covering half of his face. It is scraggly and messy, curly in some parts and straight in others, the ends are clearly wet, sticking to his face. Looking closer, I can see little bits of sand dotted throughout. His face is roundish, his cheeks puppified, and his eyes sparkle like all the stars at once. He is obviously beautiful, without a need for an explanation, he just is.

He coughs, retreating further into the dark room, if you can call it a room, it's more of a hut, thousands of branches woven together to form walls. It's captivating, my eyes drifting along the patterns, I could stare at it all day. I tilt my head backwards to see the roof, but it is a big mistake, my head starts to burn and I feel bile crawling up my throat. And then his arm is upon me once more, tilting my head to the side and rolling my body over to stop me choking on my own sick. I throw up, straight onto the floor beside the stone slab which I lie on. The boy rubs my back, soothing me. I lie back down, finding that my head hits some sort of pillow. It's made from grass, woven again. I feel bad, the boy saved my life and I don't even know his name. "Thank you." I croak and the boy nods an affirmative nod, retreating back to the floor. The hut is tiny, just enough room for the stone bed and a little tree stump in the corner. The walls are lined though, with all kinds of trinkets, little glass bottles filled with powders and shells. Out the corner of my eye, I try to see what the boy is doing. It looks like he is weaving something, his fingers working quickly and sharply, almost like knitting needles themselves, darting back and forth. His brow is furrowed, and his mouth open partially as if all energy is focused upon the task. He looks up, as if he senses me looking at him, and smiles before placing the weaving down and sticking his head out of the door. I try to watch him, but I can't, I don't want to throw up again, once is bad enough. I can hear him though, murmuring things under his breath, though I can't tell if he's speaking in English or some other language. It's just sounds to me. I hear his footsteps and he's back inside again, bending down, running his hands along the glass bottles. I can see his full body now, his torso bare and golden brown, muscles rippling beneath the skin as he moves. He looks skinny though, his bones present beneath the muscle. I can imagine there's not much to eat here. On his bottom half he wears cream shorts that look as if they have seen better days, the legs splattered with dirt and the fabric wearing away into thinness. His feet are bare and I can see that they are scarred, his soles toughened with use. But despite the dirt that seems to linger on him, he makes it work, in a sun-kissed and masculine kind of way. He turns around and I avert my eyes, not wanting to make it known that I had been staring.

He makes his way over to me, slowly, somewhat cautiously, as if he's never seen a human being before. And then it occurs to me, he might not have. He leans by my bed, looking into my eyes with a kind of fascination. He probably hasn't got a mirror either. Maybe this is the first time in years that he has seen a human being. "Thank you." I say again, but he puts a finger to my lips and shakes his head. "It's," he speaks slowly, like people imagine cavemen to, "oh-kay," he looks up as if searching his mind. "I am haypy to help." I expect his accent to be thick, Spanish, or Portuguese maybe, but it's not, it radiates American, the drawl making it through the mix up of words. I try and sit up, but he forces me down. "You rest" he says and I nod, feeling my eyes widen, everything is so new and scary. "Here," he says, pointing to the bottle in his hand. "You eaten these, will maken good." He takes the lid off the bottle and pours some of the powder into his hand, edging it nearer to my mouth. "What is it?" I manage to stutter.  
"It's err what do you call it? Seacow?"  
"Sea horse?" I say questioning.  
"Yes! Yes! I say sorry, it has been time since I speaked."  
"It's seahorse?" I say, still incredulous.  
"Yes," the boy seems confused, "I err grabbed the seacow, and I grounded it into grain. Good medicine."  
"And I eat it?"  
"You err brush it?"  
"Brush it?"  
"Like an ice cream?"  
"_Lick _it?"  
"Yes." And I have so many more questions, but my head is starting to spin once more and black spots are starting to appear, like little raindrops for my eyes. And so I move my mouth closer to the boy's arm, licking the seahorse out of his hand. Maybe it's better if I don't think about the seahorse factor right now. A sharp taste hits my mouth and I cough, I'm not sure what it tastes like but it's bad, like chewing on little shells mixed in with sand. I feel my eyes start to water but the boy keeps his hand over my mouth forcing me to swallow. I nearly choke. What is he's killing me? What if he's poisoning me? Why did I trust him? I don't know but apparently I did. Must have been something about him.

Over the next few days I lie on the stone slab, feeling like Aslan, about to be slaughtered. Pain racks through me daily, and there's not much the boy can do to stop it. Sometimes he brings berries, and sometimes the dreaded seahorses make a reappearance but most days I just lie, looking up at the sun through the cracks of the weave and wishing it would engulf me into his flames. The boy brings me food, mostly grilled fish, but sometimes he brings sea plants and fruits. And every day he sits in the same corner, the same look of wonder in his eyes as he weaves. On the third day I ask his name. "Dan," he says in a whisper and then he leaves. Dan. It suits him. The next day I tell him mine. "I'm Phil." I say, as he hands me my fish for the day. He nods. This is the extent of our conversations. I don't know what Dan does most days, but he only ever returns to the hut at night, where he lies on the sandy ground to sleep.

On the sixth day, he points to a book that lies by my bed, I found it in my back pocket on the first day. I lean down to pick it up, my head barely swirling at all, and my pain pretty much gone. And I sit up. I turn the book round to show Dan the cover 'Robinson Crusoe'. It was something I had been set to read at school, but I had been putting it off. I mean, it was written in 1719 for god's sake, who reads something that was written more than 150 years before their birth? Dan smiles, "Kind of ironic." His speaking has been getting better, the rusty cogs turning slowly, becoming a well-oiled machine. "What do you mean?"  
"You end up stranded on an island whilst reading a book about being stranded on an island." I feel a lump in my throat, in my mind I knew that's what had happened, that I only had Dan and I was somehow trapped on an island without any memory of getting there, but Dan saying it out loud made it so much more real somehow. "I've err not actually read it." I say, feeling a lot less lively then before. "You haven't?" Dan's eyes light up, looking like headlights among his dirt covered body.  
"I don't really read much."  
"Wow." Dan says, "I would give anything to be able to read a book again." I want to ask Dan why he's here, I want to ask him so bad, but I sense that he doesn't want to talk about it, and he's so _happy _I've not seen him properly smile yet; it's beautiful. I pat the space beside me on my bed, _his bed_, "Come and read it then." I say. I see Dan shrink back slightly, all this week it's like I'm a wild animal, like he's too scared to come near to me. He hesitantly makes his way over, shuffling onto the bed. He doesn't sit next to me though, he leaves a large space between us. It's obvious, a big, empty space. But I don't mention it. The last thing I want to do is scare him off. "Can you-"he stutters, looking down "Can you read it to me?" I am a little taken aback, but my voice is back to health and he looks so shy and eager that I can't help but say yes. It's a little terrifying, Dan spends half of his time looking like a tiny little woodland creature in need of help, and half of his time looking like a man who spends his life in the gym and could pin you to the floor within seconds.

I begin to read, "I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull." I look to my side, to see if I am doing okay, Dan is leant against the outer wall of the hut, his eyes closed and his mouth turned upwards into a smile. I continue, "He got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York, from whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but, by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called - nay we call ourselves and write our name - Crusoe; and so my companions always called me."

And so I read, and read, and read. Slowly, the bright tones of daytime fade, turning orange and red, the flame flickering before burning out completely, leaving us with only darkness and the glow of the moon. My voice grows hoarse, and I cannot go on, my eyes growing heavy, threatening to flutter shut. I close the book, leaving Crusoe alone on the island. Dan turns to me and smiles, "Thank you, I have missed that. I have missed that so much." It is not the time to ask. I go to put the book down, and lie my head back on the rock bed but Dan's hand reaches my arm. "Do you want to come outside with me?" Outside. I've forgotten that that existed, I have forgotten that there is a world outside of this tiny hut. A pretty big one too. "I would love to." I say, and Dan's smile grows wider.

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_**Thank you for reading, what did you think?**_


	2. Chapter 2

_**Thanks to uhnonniemiss and its-real-to-us for reviewing! If you have any feedback or thoughts please review :)**_

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The moon is bright and the sand is wet and at some point Dan's hand slipped into mine.

The sky is bruised, blacks fading into blues fading into purples, as if it has been dyed and is now dripping, melting into the sea below. The sea is black too. Except it isn't. It is a mirror, reflecting a thousand stars, each one unique and individual and yet every one of them shining bright, demanding attention, craving to be seen. No nursery rhyme could ever do them justice. The waves lap in and out and the sound splashes into my ears; it is as if a switch has been turned on in my brain, as if the waves are lapping in my own head. I am happy. I am relaxed. For the past few days my mind has been blurred with confusion, as if a plastic seal was reflecting all thought; but here is, something I understand. Something I know. It's beautiful. Darkness is beautiful, whoever claims it isn't is wrong. Misunderstood. That's what darkness is. The misunderstood teenager in the corner. The stereotype that people don't even know they're making. People see darkness and they see fear, they see monsters and shadows, they see bumps in the night and cold, what they fail to see is the ordain beauty. The ordain beauty of darkness. The simplicity of blackness. Things do not have to be bright to be beautiful, there is a sort of unspoken beauty in black. It is a mask, it covers all which is harsh, in the dark you see nothing of the world that man has destroyed, only the stars. And a sky full of stars is the closest thing to heaven there is.

Dan's is looking at me. I can feel his eyes even if I can't see them. That's another thing about darkness, it brings you confidence. In the realm of darkness you can say what you could not say in the shadow of the sun, in the midst of blackness you can have the courage to perform the acts you would usually shy away from. And so I don't need to look. Don't need to turn my head to know he is there, and to know he is watching.

The sand wriggles between my toes as he leads me across the beach, his hand warm despite the biting air, his arm strong despite the sinking sand. Memories. A little red bucket. A bright blue spade. A purple towel and a yellow parasol. Shells. Pebbles. A smile and a laugh. What were we doing? The sea, racing towards us, pretend panic rising in our throats as we overturned buckets of sand. Sandcastles? We were building sandcastles? I strain, but I cannot remember. Everything is blank. Everything is clear as the night itself. Except I don't have stars. Maybe Dan can become mine.

Dan turns round and I see his head nod slightly in the glow of the moon. We carry on walking, the sand dune getting steeper and steeper until Dan abandons my hand to crawl on all fours. I cling to pieces of grass, using them as handholds to haul myself up. I'm glad the moon is there. The moon has my back. Slip. Bang. Memory. Hard rock wall, slippery surface. Taunt rope, distant shouting. Rock Climbing? I shake my head, my hair flopping over my fringe. Where are these memories coming from?

A hand shoots through the darkness and grabs onto my arm, I pull myself up. I can't see a smile, but I imagine one, I imagine the half smirk, the slight light-up of the eyes, the rounding of the cheeks. "This is my favourite place." Dan says.  
"It's beautiful." He pauses, there is no reason to hurry in the darkness, no need to rush your words out. The stars, the lulling of the sea, the consistent stillness of the night, creates an allusion of time slowing down. It's soothing.  
"The stars on the island are much brighter than the ones in the city." I can hear the gulp in his voice, can see him in my mind, knees towards chest, head up, stars filling his eyes as the grow wetter, just like the sea itself. "You came from the city?" I ask. Dan is silent, the tide creeps in.  
"Yes."  
"You remember?"  
"I do."

I sense it is not the time to ask him about it and so I too tilt my head backwards to look at the stars. I don't know how I got here, I don't know where I came from and I don't know whether ending up here was a blessing or a curse. But right now, huddled under a blanket of stars with the boy with the smile, it feels nothing short of a wonder.

It gets colder and I feel myself start to shake, the wind crawling up my arms and running its way through my hair. It's as if someone turned the oven off. Then I remember, _Desert _Island, warm by day, cold by night. I shiver again. The information doesn't help. An arm reaches out, wraps itself around me, pulling me towards a body. Dan. I curl myself into his chest, my legs pressed against his and his arm around my shoulder. I am still shivering. The silence is broken, and his voice rings out like a lullaby, he tells me a story. The stars seem to move, to stare down at him as he speaks, as if all of nature is pinpointed onto him. And so I listen.

"When I first got here, it was night time, I had paddled and paddled for hours, my feet had gone numb from the cold, and my heart was worn out from beating so fast." His voice is slow and rhythmic like the sea itself. "I was scared, more scared than I'd ever been before, I was convinced that I would die out at sea, that I would fall and sink to the bottom, that I would become one of the many layers of sand. But I didn't and then I saw this place and I was the happiest I think I have ever been. It looked like a slice of heaven, of paradise, the stars shining so brilliantly as if guiding me home. And I looked at it, and I knew I'd finally found it, I'd finally found myself a home." He is crying by the end, and he bends his head down to rest atop of mine, the sand merging with the sea and the stars. A home, the word feels warm in my mind.

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_**Thanks for reading and please review!**_


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